Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America

by Lauren Lassabe Shepherd

Overview

Pivoting from studies that emphasize the dominance of progressivism on American college campuses during the late sixties and early seventies, Lauren Lassabe Shepherd positions conservative critiques of, and agendas in, American colleges and universities as an essential dimension of a broader conversation of conservative backlash against liberal education.
 
This book explores the story of how stakeholders in American higher education organized and reacted to challenges to their power from the New Left and Black Power student resistance movements of the late 1960s. By examining the range of conservative student organizations and coalition building, Shepherd shows how wealthy donors and conservative intellectuals trained future GOP leaders such as Karl Rove, Bill Barr, Jeff Sessions, Pat Buchanan, and others in conservative politics, providing them with tactics to consciously drive American politics and culture further to the authoritarian right and to "reclaim" American higher education.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469674506
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	08/10/2023
Series:	Justice, Power, and Politics
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	280
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Lauren Lassabe Shepherd is instructor of higher education at the University of New Orleans.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Resistance from the Right confidently places conservative thinkers and sponsors in conversation with students in an effort to reveal the expanse of the cultural battlefield of higher education. Shepherd's meticulous and timely book highlights the right in the history of student activism."—Stefan M. Bradley, Amherst College

Strong, unique, and well researched, this book addresses a major gap in the studies of American higher education in the protest era of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Digging deeply into a range of conservative organizations and actors, Shepherd offers a refreshing conversation about student activism in the late 1960s."—Linda Eisenmann, Wheaton College

Resistance from the Right places the campus conservatives of the late 1960s where they belong: not as a mere footnote, not as a mere quirk, but as a central formative part of American conservatism in the late twentieth century. This book is an absolute must read for anyone hoping to understand either American conservatism or American higher education."—Adam Laats, author of Fundamentalist U: Keeping the Faith in American Higher Education

This book is a superb addition to the growing scholarship on the history of the American right. Lauren Lassabe Shepherd convincingly argues that right-wing students on American campuses during the 1960s were unpopular but that popularity was not a prerequisite for them to build power. Rather, the student right's path to power was its alignment with influential authorities both on and off campus. Based on voluminous archival research and interviews with former right-wing campus activists, Resistance from the Right is a must read! This book shows that our current campus wars are rooted in sixty years of right-wing organizing against real and perceived progressivism in the nation's universities."—Andrew Hartman, author of A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars

At once a valuable historical contribution and a work of ripped-from-the-headlines timeliness, Resistance from the Right zeroes in on the crucible of the late 1960s when student protest went both mainstream and militant, and conservatives built a coalition and an ethos from the task of resisting it. Chronicling three pivotal years with meticulous precision grounded in extensive archival and oral history research, Shephard definitively conveys how the New Right forged its distinctively puckish, trolling style in combat with—and imitation of—the sixties New Left and counterculture."—Sam Rosenfeld, author of The Polarizers: Postwar Architects of Our Partisan Era

Resistance from the Right is a vital, urgent exploration of the right's long war on the university, showcasing that current attacks on higher education are nothing new but rather the result of a sixty-year battle to undermine a diversifying university. Truly a must-read."—Nicole Hemmer, author of Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s

Editorial Reviews

A thoroughly researched, revelatory political history with abundant relevance for today. . . . Shepherd presents compelling evidence for the ways that these groups, although a minority on campus, have exerted long-lasting influence."—Kirkus Reviews (STARRED review)

Any organization founded by William F. Buckley and M. Stanton Evans is not going to be supportive of free speech. As historian Lauren Lassabe Shepherd documents in Resistance from the Right, Young Americans for Freedom has been characterized from the start as a group of extremely pampered establishment scions who are prone to both self-pity and deploying their social and legal power to silence their political enemies."—Jeet Heer, The Nation

A sobering and rigorous work of history, one with significant ramifications for the present. . . . Shepherd's account is a powerful corrective, a compelling narrative, and a frankly frightening parable."—Jacobin

From the Publisher

★ 2023-05-23
The roots of right-wing politics on 1960s college campuses.

In her debut book, historian Shepherd draws on oral histories, archival sources, and interviews with 56 individuals to offer a deep examination of the reactionary movement on college campuses from 1967 to 1970. Students involved in organizations such as the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Young Americans for Freedom, and others benefited from financial support and mentorship from “anti-New Deal elders” seeking to foment “an astroturf mobilization against a so-called liberal establishment in higher education.” Shepherd investigates the many political, evangelical, libertarian, and “sizable and energetic” White supremacist clubs and organizations that reacted against peace and Black Power movements and that rallied in support of the Vietnam War. Some members of those groups became famous political figures, including Newt Gingrich, Bill Barr, Jeff Sessions, Karl Rove, Pat Buchanan, and David Duke. All became powerful leaders in business, law, higher education, and conservative think tanks, where they continued to promote the views that they honed in their college years, driving American politics and culture further to the authoritarian right. The author clearly shows how “the current panic from the Right over student culture; curricula; and faculty hiring, tenure, and promotion is part of a longer historical pattern.” Although she reveals some in-fighting and ideological splits within student groups, their demographic was largely cohesive. In the 1960s, she reports, 95% of college students were White, middle class, and, except in women’s colleges, male. They presented themselves as “heteronormative white Christians,” proud to call themselves squares, as opposed to their long-haired hippie classmates. The groups disseminated their ideas through magazines and campus media; carefully curated speaker events; and, after campus protest demonstrations in 1968, calls for increased punishments for leftist student activists. Shepherd presents compelling evidence for the ways that these groups, although a minority on campus, have exerted long-lasting influence.

A thoroughly researched, revelatory political history with abundant relevance for today.

Kirkus Reviews